Let kids get dirty
Conventional wisdom has long been that the more we can rid our lives of germs, the healthier we’ll be. That’s changing.
We’re starting to realize how our overemphasis on antiseptics is actually harming us more than it’s helping.
There are, of course, growing concerns about the overuse of antibiotics and the consequent rise of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” that can turn once-minor, easily treatable infections into life-threatening ones.
But the other part to this story concerns what we have come to know as the “microbiome” — the billions of beneficial microbes that inhabit our bodies, help us function normally and even ward off a host of diseases.
The upshot is that maintaining a healthy population of “good” bacteria in our bodies and our environment may ultimately be just as important as, say, developing the next generation of antibiotics.
It means that we need to drastically revise our outlook when it comes to germs — and how we raise our kids.
It’s with this mission in mind that two Canadian microbiologists, Dr. Brett Finlay and Dr. MarieClaire Arrieta, wrote (Greystone Books, 2016).
The book functions both as a primer on the growing body of scientific knowledge around the microbiome, as well as a guide for parents who now find themselves navigating through essentially uncharted territory.
“When you look at the morbidity tables and what kids died of 100 years ago, they’re all infections,” says Finlay. “Now, it’s very rare that kids die of these things — and that’s great news.
“But what is now coming about is this massive revelation that the microbes we didn’t really know much about or pay any attention to, are being closely linked with all the diseases that you think of in western society — things like asthma and allergies, obesity, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, brain development diseases such as autism, and even dementia.”
The problem is that our overuse of antibiotics and antiseptic products has not just triggered the aforementioned resistance; it has also wiped out many of the beneficial bacteria that keep us healthy.
Finlay points in particular to a study he and Arrieta co-authored, involving 3,500 Canadian children, published in the journal
in 2015. In it, they found a strong correlation between the absence of certain microbes in their bodies at three months of age and a significantly higher risk of developing asthma.
“We’ve carpet-bombed the microbes and this has a big effect later in life,” says Finlay. “That’s where we would like to push this conversation.” What should parents do? Given the overuse of antibiotics, parents need to learn not to expect them to be prescribed whenever someone gets sick.
Making some changes to diet is key, too. As a parent, Arrieta tries to feed her kids foods that are not only nutritious but also help promote a healthy microbiome.
This means lots of vegetables rich in fibre, as well as probiotics. For babies, it means breastfeeding (when possible), as well as fruits, vegetables, whole grain cereals and fermented foods such as yogurt.
Perhaps most importantly, however, parents should learn to be less paranoid about their kids getting sick from a little bit of dirtiness. Make sure kids know to wash their hands after using the toilet or before meals, if they’ve been around someone who’s sick or in a public place such as a mall or public transit. But there’s no need to panic if their kid has been playing in the sandbox, and chasing them around with hand sanitizer and wet wipes is counterproductive.
All within reason, of course. “I think letting your kid roll around on your own floor and lick it and everything, that’s probably OK,” says Finlay. “But rolling around on the subway floor? Probably not a good idea.”
There were other examples of where having more germs in a child’s environment was found to be beneficial. One study, published in suggested exposure to dogs and farm animals early in life reduced the chances of developing asthma by age six (cats, unfortunately, were not found to be of any similar benefit).
Finlay and Arrieta both like to stress that there’s no need to sterilize every item and surface a child touches. In researching the book, they encountered plenty of parents who believed that everything from the floors their babies crawled on to bottles, high chairs and pacifiers needed to be sterilized, even bleached. Interestingly, allowing for the exact opposite may be healthier.
“There’s an interesting study where they looked at kids who spit their soothers on the ground,” says Finlay.
“Parents had two options: They could go wash the soother off, or they could put their own mouth on it and put it back into their kid’s mouth. And if their put their mouth on it, then the kids had less obesity and asthma and diabetes downstream just because they were associated more with the parental microbes than if those whose parents were scrubbing the soother off every time.”
The good thing about this change in outlook is that it’s actually less stressful, given parents need not be constantly worried about the germs that their kids might be picking up. They can step back a bit and relax.
“Let them explore and be adventurous and get dirty,” says Arrieta, “and don’t panic if you see that they have dirt in their mouths, because every now and then it will happen.”